I blinked hard and shook my head, looking down at my congealing oatmeal. Phuture News was back now, and the odds were that our friends Orlando and Melinda were going to have a big catfight soon.
Most people had already lined up on team Orlando, so I opted for Melinda. I always liked the undercat, and this time is wasn’t Adriana. As I watched, clever taunts were being devised while their viral values were sized up by several off-island marketing agencies, eager to reach the Atopian crowd. The social storm clouds continued to grow.
It reminded me of Brigitte, and my stomach jumped. I put down my spork. And then my brain snapped out of it, as if wrenched from… a bear trap.
Something was very wrong.
I blinked hard again and shook my head, looking down at the congealing oatmeal. Didn’t I just eat that? Phuture News was now blank and back to images of me staring at images of me staring at images of me staring at images of me.
The oatmeal was sputtering and bubbling in the bowl. I was standing back next to the fridge, holding the apple, about to shine it on my pajama leg. Wait a minute. Didn’t this just happen? I was déjà vu-ing hard, losing my grip. My chest tightened, and my breathing was labored.
Am I having a heart attack?
I smelled burned toast.
“Wally!” I cried out. “Where the hell are you?”
Where was he when I needed him? Wasn’t he supposed to be watching out for me?
“Willy, calm down, everything is okay,” I heard Wally say, his voice soothing, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. “Don’t worry, everything is fine. The chest pain is just anxiety. Your blood stream is flooding with cortisol and adrenalin. Take a deep breath, calm down.”
I took in a deep breath, held it, and slowly let it out. My cheeks felt flushed. “Calm down,” I told myself, “calm down.”
Closing my eyes, I tried to focus, and the stress began to wash out. In an instant, I was lying down, but I didn’t remember getting there. Maybe Wally had helped me back to bed.
I could see myself lying still, absolutely calm. What was I just worrying about? Why worry about anything? Everything was so insignificant. My head felt like cotton balls had been stuffed in through my ears, displacing my brain, and I had the curious sensation that I had been wrapped in idiot mittens, to keep me from hurting myself.
In my mind’s eye I could see myself with my mother. She was bending over me, the arms of her sweater rolled up as she hummed a lullaby, giving me a bath in the chipped porcelain wash basin in our old family kitchen on the Montana commune.
Through streaked windowpanes, trees swayed outside under wet, windy skies. The cows in the field huddled under the protection of the ponderosa pines that nestled along one side of our farm. Dense forests stretched up into the foothills with the snow-capped Rockies solidly framing it all.
It was cold outside but warm in here. The steaming water soaked into my little bones. We were so happy together in this small moment of time, so precious. I heard the splash and tinkle of water as she lifted the washcloth, the sounds echoing through time.
“How’s my silly Willy?” she laughed, tweaking my nose.
“Wally?” I asked, more calmly this time. “Wally, what is happening to me? Where are you?”
I could sense Wally, but I couldn’t see him or hear him. Somehow, though, I could feel him speaking to me.
“Everything is okay,” I felt him say. “But there’s something I need to tell you.”
I should’ve felt worried but I didn’t.
“You’re part of something special, Willy.”
“I know. The Atopia program, I got that.”
“Not just that, something more unique, something much more important.”
I liked that. “Go on.” I’d always thought of myself as unique, like a small snowflake adrift in the wind, floating painlessly, soundlessly.
“You’re familiar with Schrödinger’s cat?”
“Sure.”
The old quantum physics thought experiment. An object in superposition can exist in more than one state. The cat in the box that is both alive and dead at the same time.
“It’s now possible to enable quantum superposition not just with atoms, but on larger objects. Much larger objects, in fact.”
“Okay, but what’s this got to do with me?” The idea of quantum physics needing a conscious observer had always annoyed me. It smacked of God hiring city workers to turn the cranks of the cosmos.
“You may want to sit down, there’s a downside to what I’m about to tell you.”
I had already lain down. What’s wrong with him?
“Your living space is contained within a giant quantum trap. You are the first sentient being to be wholly placed in a superposition state. You are both alive and dead at the same time, a conscious nexus point between life and death. In a moment, when you understand what I’m saying, you will also be the first sentience to observe yourself in superposition, and so create your own existence. Before you fully understand what I’m saying, Willy, hurry, and tell us what you are feeling.”
So I was the cat in the box.
Staring at my hands, I looked inward on myself, looking at myself, looking at myself… and meowed.
I woke up in bed, alone, soaked in sweat and my heart pounding. As the dream faded, I remembered what had happened. Brigitte and I had split up, and now Wally was gone, but I was still alive, which meant that somebody somewhere out there was taking care of my body that had somehow disappeared. My greed had put me in this position, and they were probably going to put me in jail for it.
That was, if they could find me.
12
Identity: Nancy Killiam
I couldn’t believe the big day was actually here. Infinixx was about to be released to the world.
Although our product worked in the open multiverse, it still needed physical infrastructure on the ground in the form of three consciousness processing centers. These massive computing installations, all tied together on dedicated communication links, were designed to handle local processing to reduce sensory latencies.
Each hub, for lack of a better description, was like a huge, blank mind, and they had to be booted up in sequence to maintain a coherent phase-lock between them. Each required a large local power source to drive it, and we’d decided to make an event out of throwing the switches to power them up.
At the same time as the launch of the Infinixx product, we were simultaneously floating the newly minted Infinixx stock onto the world markets as the Indian, Chinese, and Atopian processing centers came online.
The Solomon House Ballroom was packed to the rafters. I’d asked each of our board members and senior executives to be there in person for the launch. I was walking up and down in front of the head table that was set on the stage above the main floor, shaking each person’s hand in turn, thanking them for their hard work and support.
“Excited, Brian?” I asked my CTO. He nodded and told me I should sit down. I couldn’t. My entire future was resting on what happened in the next few minutes, and I felt ill.
In the ceremonial opening, I was to throw the switch to get everything started. Its power system was routed up here, the junction box set against the wall just above and behind my chair. I’d decided to inject a little surprise and symbolism into the event by bestowing the honor of throwing the switch onto either Jimmy or Aunt Patty, who were sitting up on the stage with me.
“Everyone!” Kesselring thundered with a smile, shouting out at the packed crowd from the podium. He had gotten on board with the launch in a big way once we’d made the decision. “Everyone, quiet down!”